Article June 28, 1952 Issue

A NEW CRUSADE OF FREEDOM

WALTER BRENZIKOFER

Freedom is an idea eternally existing in the divine Mind, God. Since man is the reflection of Mind, freedom also is native to man. Being unceasingly conscious of his freedom, man is in never-ending enjoyment of it. Because freedom is God-given, it lies deep in every human breast, and individuals have long striven to make it, with its kindred gifts of justice and equality, manifest in human experience. For example, some of the milestones along the road to freedom are the Magna Charta of the year 1215, by which English barons secured certain rights from the king, and the Perpetual League, or first charter, of the Swiss Confederation, concluded in 1291 by the mountaineers around Lake Lucerne to better defend themselves against "the cunning of the world." A great step toward freedom and the possession of human rights was later taken in the Reformation, and in the eighteenth century, history points to two outstanding landmarks: the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the Declaration of the Rights of Man by the French Constituent Assembly.

These vindications of liberty greatly forwarded mankind's emancipation from oppression and inequality to the enjoyment of the inalienable rights which, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, "are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," with which their creator has endowed them. Yet these and other immortal expressions of liberty do not comprise the whole freedom of man. They do not go so far as to annul all subjection to evil. A higher declaration of the rights and liberties of man—although all of these had been claimed and demonstrated by Christ Jesus centuries before—was therefore needed, and it came through the discovery of Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy. Thus her establishment of the Christian Science movement inaugurated a new crusade of freedom that is destined to abolish all slavery.

With the exception of the Bible, Mrs. Eddy's textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," contains the greatest proclamation of freedom the world has ever known. A stirring passage from its pages reads (p. 226): "God has built a higher platform of human rights, and He has built it on diviner claims. These claims are not made through code or creed, but in demonstration of 'on earth peace, good-will toward men.' Human codes, scholastic theology, material medicine and hygiene, fetter faith and spiritual understanding. Divine Science rends asunder these fetters, and man's birthright of sole allegiance to his Maker asserts itself."

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